What happened was, after reading about the sheep’s plight on Tuesday, animal rights activist Mike Stura decided to drive all the way from Jersey to the Al Noor Halal Meat Market in hopes of rescuing the sheep (he even got the market’s owner to agree to give him the sheep for free), but in the confusion of last-minute preparations for this week’s Muslim holiday Eid Al-Adha, he was given the wrong animal. “I realized immediately [it was the wrong lamb],” Stura told DNAinfo. “I just wanted to get that girl home, out of that situation and to make sure she was safe.”

Stura took the accidental decoy sheep to an animal sanctuary in Watkins Glen, but when he returned to the meat market on Wednesday, the original animal (along with all the others) was long gone. “At least we saved one,” the market’s owner said. Which really, is a pretty understanding stance given that selling meat for consumption is his livelihood. And that there’s no real reason—aside from the sheep’s relative cuteness and the visceral sadness of its brief, ill-fated escape from certain death—that this should be any bigger of a deal than the countless animals that die in similar ways each day for our consumption (or recreation). But, still. That sheep is long gone. RIP, friend.